Darling, You're A Fighter
by liron-aria
Summary: Kendall Morgan has a secret that's less a secret and more the actual bane of her life. It's listed in neat, Times New Roman font in a database at Amber Beach Regional Neurology and Sleep Sciences as focal epilepsy with impairment of consciousness.


A/N: Wow, it's been a while since I was in this fandom, eh? this is actually just a purely self-indulgent fic where I dump like half my life struggles onto my favourite character. Aka I am also a grumpy epileptic who whose epilepsy was triggered in grad school ( _Harvard GSAS is a cesspit,_ though I can't really speak for the Business School; Harvard's suicide rate probably can) and takes Lamictal (common name lamotrigine).

Anyway, I hope you read and enjoy, and my fellow epileptics like the representation!

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Kendall Morgan has a secret that's less a secret and more the _actual bane of her life._ It's listed in neat, Times New Roman font in a database at Amber Beach Regional Neurology and Sleep Sciences as _focal epilepsy with impairment of consciousness._

It's the reason she doesn't call herself 'Dr. Morgan' even when she has a PhD, because she doesn't want to be reminded of the worst time of her life and the reason for that database entry to begin with.

(Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is a cesspit and Harvard Business School might be in a prettier building but is not any better.)

(Her PI looked at her after her first seizure and said distastefully _maybe Harvard isn't the place for you.)_

(Fuck that. She completes her PhD/MBA program out of sheer spite.)

Her seizures are atonic, so a lot of the time it looks like she's just fallen asleep at her desk. Chase finds her meds in the early days when he's a little shit snooping to find out more about her.

He reads up on epilepsy and stops snooping.

Kendall's seizures are managed completely by her meds -

And the Keeper and the Power Rangers happen.

And then she's out in the field nearly as much as Chase because _they're the only ones_ , and how can she send him out without backup?

She has breakthrough seizures. Her neurologist increases her medication. She moves on.

Except she doesn't have _time_ to eat or sleep like a normal person, and in the back of her mind, she _knows_ that's just exacerbating the problem. But she can't allow herself to think about that, when there's so much more important work to do.

It's Riley who suggests that, as a civilian, she should stick to working in the lab, and leave the fighting to the Rangers. And she agrees, because it's the logical, sensible thing to do.

(It stings, but she's an adult. It's fine. She's fine.)

She's fine when two more Rangers join the team with more zords and Energems and morphers and she works overtime between supporting the Power Rangers and her museum, and if she has a breakthrough seizure here and there, well, as far as her scans show, increasing her dosage is really the only thing her neurologist can recommend.

Ten days after her latest dosage increase, Shelby comments on the large, ugly rash she's been absently scratching while working, Kendall's gaze snaps down and her blood runs cold.

Oh, God. It can't be - oh god oh god no, no -

She scrambled out of her seat, pale and terrified, because holy fuck, of _course_ she would be in the .3% of the population of adults who develop Lamictal's fatal rash as a side effect oh _God_ she's finally coming out of her work haze and registering that _everything hurts_ and she needs to get to the doctor immediately fuck -

She collapses a few feet from her desk.

The Rangers, of course, are alarmed, more so when they can't wake her up. Chase curses when he sees the rash, because he remembers reading about this, and it _could_ just be a one-off infection, it _could_ be something mild that can be treated with hydrocortisone, but _Kendall's fucking unconscious so it probably isn't._

Jesus fucking fuck -

He starts barking orders to call an ambulance, to Kendall upstairs, that _no_ , none of the tech they have in the lab is going to work, and _yes_ , he knows what's happening and they need to get to the hospital bloody _yesterday_.

It's Chase who rifles through Kendall's purse to find her medication and new dosage, it's Chase who rattles off what little he knows about her medical condition right now to the EMTs and the doctors, rides with her in the ambulance, and fills out what paperwork he can.

He's completely unsurprised and vaguely relieved to find out Kendall has him as her emergency contact.

(She knew the day he found out.)

And when his panicking team demands to know why Kendall didn't tell them something was wrong, why _he_ didn't tell them, he gives them a long lecture on medical consent. And then a laptop with some twenty pages from the Epilepsy Foundation and Mayo Clinic open shoved at them.

Somewhere along the line, they forgot that while the Power protects them from injury and illness, Kendall doesn't have the same luxury.

The doctors ply her with hydrocortisone and antihistamines and run a battery of blood tests and scans while the rash still spreads. Kendall's always been the shortest and lightest of them all, but right now, she looks frail in a way she never has before, and they've never felt more helpless.

Riley mutters about organ damage and disappears into a stack of medical articles he barely understands until Tyler and Chase and Koda pull him away and send him off to take care of Kendall's administrative duties at the museum, which is more within his skillset. Shelby sifts through Kendall's notes and plans for the tech she'd been working on and tries to complete it so that there'll be one less thing for Kendall to worry about when she gets back.

(Because she will. She has to.)

The Rangers set up a rotating shift of people to stay with her. They only time they leave is when there's a monster attack (because of _course_ there would be, knowing their luck it's because their enemies somehow found out their Tech is in the hospital). And they're scared and angry and fight that much more brutally, but Chase is fucking lethal, because he's _been_ with Kendall the longest, and even if she keeps all of them all at arm's length for 'professionalism's sake, their relationship used to be _different_ , and he'd let that slide as the Ranger team grew larger and she grew distant.

(The others tell him that's bullshit, but the guilt doesn't go away that easy.)

But Kendall's a fighter, and she wakes up. She groans at the new round of medication adjustment she'll have to go through, but she's alive, so whatever. She puts up with her team's worry and smothering fussing, even though she _hates_ it and wants to snap by day two that none of them are medical professionals and need to _back off_ because she's a _fully grown woman and can take care of herself._

(She always has before.)

But they mean well, so she bites it back. She really is touched.

And then the Purple Energem appears, and suddenly, she's a Ranger.

Suddenly, she has access to the Power. Access to the Power's _protection._

She quietly schedules another MRI and EEG and cries and cries when she sees the results because it's all _gone_ , her brain is _normal,_ and there's _no sign of focal epilepsy with impairment of consciousness._

And she cries because this won't last, because one day she won't be a Power Ranger and she'll no longer be protected. It'll all come back.

(She wants her sister. She wants her mother. But Kendrix fucked off to another galaxy long ago, and her mother's - never mind. That hasn't been an option since she was twelve and learned to cook for herself.)

There's no one, so she hides under her blankets like a five-year-old and lets her tears run dry.

And the next day morning, she gets up and gets dressed, because curse or no curse, disability or no disability, she is a _fighter_ , and there is a _world_ to save. It's time to get back to work.

* * *

A/N: Final notes -

1) The Chase + Kendal BrOTP is my actual life and I dearly wish there was more of it in fanfic. As you can see, this is set pre-Ivan, because I'm still going through the series and Ivan appeared like two episodes ago, and explaining a seizure disorder to a medieval knight who probably still considers the humours and the anger of whatever deity he believes is the height of science was... not high on my list of interests.

2) Kendall's diagnosis is the same as mine, though I also take Vimpat in addition to lamotrigine, and I get double vision occasionally instead of (mercifully) the rash. Normally, the first drug epileptics are treated with is Keppra, but I'm severely allergic to that, sooooo try not to come at me with telling me how inaccurate I am or w/e kthx.


End file.
